NSW Council Elections

NSW Council Elections are being held in most New South Wales (State) Local Government areas today. However, if you live in Wollongong, (and I believe Shellharbour, and Coffs Harbour - don't take my word for these latter ones, but in Wollongong it is certainly the case) then you cannot vote today. That is because your previous Council was sacked by the NSW Government for corrupt behaviour and/or incompetence.

Why should that decision (to sack a Council) disenfranchise the community - for another 4 years?

Anyway, in happy little Wingecarribee Shire, our Council escaped the verdict of incompetence or corruption (because Sydney had bigger fish to fry), and our Council survived to the bitter end of its life. So today we got to vote for a new Council.

At least the weather was nice, this morning in Robertson, when I lined up to take the "How to Vote" cards from the hander-outerers at the front gate of the Robertson School of Arts.

And who did I vote for?
We have secret ballots, fortunately. But I will tell you who I did NOT vote for.

• Malcolm Murray and his team.
• Duncan Gair and his team.
• May King and her team, and the
• Liberal Party team.

And I voted No and No on the so-called Poll regarding the Leisure Centre.

Geraldine Turner (of the Save the Highlands team), Larry Whipper, Jim Clark and the Greens team, Graham McLaughlin and the Labor Team, Jim Mauger and his team, and Ken Halstead can all take some comfort from that information. As an individual voter I can only choose my preferences, but if there are not enough voters of like minds to get a particular candidate over the "Quota" line, then sorry, but I have done my best.

I only have a single vote, after all.

If you do not like that situation, then perhaps you ought talk to a local political wheeler and dealer (a particularly lucky boy). He might possibly have some ideas as how to overcome that hurdle. Personally, I am content to stick with the old "One Vote, One Value" concept.

We shall see over the ensuing days who has been elected, and whether the Leisure Centre has been rejected in the Poll.

The Southern Highlands News has done an excellent job of covering the Election Candidates opinions on a range of subjects. However, they have let themselves down with this last minute word of advice: "Dismiss the theatrics of the past few weeks, disregard your loyalties, and vote with your head!" That is a cop out, in my opinion. We have many candidates who were Councillors last time who frankly do not deserve to be re-elected.

Sunset of a Career? D Day today.

Today is Decision Day. If you have read any of my recent posts, you will know from whence I come.

• NOTE: It's not just my view, by the way. Miss Eagle has a similar view, and a link to the Age, with a brilliantly written comment by Tracee Hutchinson - check it out here. For her part, Miss Eagle has been working on the theme of Howard's "Chooks coming home to roost" (she is a country girl at heart). Today is the day, Folks.

I recommend voting to get rid of the little lying "weasel-word" specialist.

Defend the spirit of justice in Australia. Remember the injustices we have written about - from Iraq to the Northern Territory, and to Guantanamo Bay. Don't let him continue to lie about Clean Coal, or deny Global Warming. Its too late for that.

Did I say, vote with vengeance? That's what I feel like doing. Enjoy giving little Johnnie something to take away with him - a sense of humiliation which he thoroughly deserves.

Don't take my word for it. Here is part of the Sydney Morning Herald editorial from 23 November 2007.

• "We have waited for the vision of the next era of conservative government, but it never came. Instead, we have seen only attempts to rally or panic sections of the community with pork-barrelling and scare campaigns. We have said in the past that Mr Howard was entitled to choose the time of his going. But we also said that in doing so Mr Howard should bear in mind the need for a smooth transition. He has done the former, but neglected the latter. He is now asking Australians, in effect, to vote a lame duck into office - and then wait 18 months or more to find out what that really means. It is too much to ask. It is a matter of the greatest regret that the Prime Minister has mishandled his chance to choose a time to step down."

Lastly, let me say that for every small businessman I know, for whom John Howard pretends to govern, there are very few who have survived the voracious hunger of Big Business. Just ask any shopkeeper, trying to pay the rents which Westfield, etc, charge them. The rich are getting richer. The small are getting poorer, by being forced out of business.

Enough from me. You know what I think.

Is this the Sunset of John Howard's Career?
He deserves to go - now!

Sunset of a Career? D Day minus 2

Tomorrow, Saturday 24 November 2007 is Decision Day for Australia. Are we about to see the sunset of John Howard's career?If the Polls and tomorrow's headlines are any guide, it seems highly likely.

I would have to say there are good reasons.

• Iraq
• The "NT invasion" of Aboriginal communities - with fanfare, but little or no positive effect, in terms of positive outcomes for the children. Remember the children who were at risk? Invading Australian troops were supposed to bring about a change in their safety. Strangely, we have heard nothing about that since the election started. It always was a ruse. It had little or nothing to do with the safety of the children.
• The AWB Scandal - where some $30 million was sent to the Saddam Hussein regime, as kickbacks. A regime which was supposedly so awful that we needed to go to war against it - leaving Australian troops facing military forces paid for, in part, by Australian bribes. Do you remember that?
• Weapons of Mass Destruction?
• Climate Change - John Howard denied that it was real - for 10 of the last 11 years, then said it might be a real event, but we dare not risk the economy to do anything about it.
• Refusal to sign the Kyoto Agreement.
• "Clean Coal". Clean Coal is a myth. It is an oxymoron. It just gives the Government an excuse to continue allowing the Multinational Mining Companies in Australia to continue with business as usual.
• GST - remember that one? The tax we would not have.
• Rising Home Loan interest rates.
• David Hicks. Remember him? Poor bastard nearly rotted in Guantanamo until Howard eventually realised how embarrassing it was. Offenses against Human Rights, committed by the greatest "Democracy" in the world, in the name of "Freedom". And the little Toady went along with it until even he could ignore the embarrassment no longer.
  
• "Work Choices" - that fraudulently named program which gave all the choices and the power to the Employers, and bugger all, except an AWA Ultimatum, to the workers.
  
• Etc, etc, etc.

• The fraudulent Lindsay Election leaflets are just a symptom of the problem of a corrupt Government.
  

Sunset of a career?

Are we witnessing the brilliant sunset of a political career?

The next few posts will let you know what I anticipate.

Tonight's Late Line (ABC TV) broke the story that NSW State Liberal Party members have been caught handing out fake posters purporting to be from an Islamic organisation thanking the Labor Party for supporting Islamic extremists in Indonesia - so the story goes.

Naturally the Liberal Party officials are distancing themselves from the exercise. Andrew Robb (on Lateline) described it is amateurish & unauthorised. And that it was not an official Liberal Party exercise. Oh, did I say he used the word "unauthorised".

Gosh, Andrew - would you really expect a fake Islamic document to bear the words "Authorised by Graham Jaeschke for the NSW Liberal Party". I don't think so. So, to take refuge in the fact that it is "unauthorised" is facile, and meaningless Andrew.

Caught Red Handed is more to the point.

Typical of the Liberal Party's arrogance that they could think they could get a couple of "Anglos" to hand out "fake Islamic" documents without being noticed as obviously a fraud and a con job?

I understand that the story will be in the Daily Telegraph tomorrow (Thursday). The first version of the story is already published, but a fuller version might well be more dynamic.

Peter Andren MP - RIP. A decent man.

Vale, Peter Andren - former Member for Calare.
It was announced this morning that Peter Andren had died as a result of pancreatic cancer. He retired at the closure of the Parliamentary Session, but unfortunately he was too sick to attend the last day of sittings. He had previously announced his intention to stand for the Senate, but later withdrew from that contest, after he received his diagnosis.

Peter Andren was an Independent - in name and in spirit. He stood for honesty in Government. You can read his "Maiden Speech" here. Peter Andren's maiden speech is very refreshing, and honest. Amongst other things, he pointed to the stupidity of Governments closing down rural infrastructure, and failing to support railways, despite serious offers by large corporations to use rail instead of road transport. That comment fell on deaf ears of Government.

Right up until the end, he was opposing abuses of the procedures of Government. His last Press Release, was calling for the end to the cat and mouse game of the Prime Minister deferring calling the election. And that was primarily because he opposed the abuse of Government funding of advertising campaigns which were clearly party-political in nature, but were masquerading as "Government" advertising.

The people of Australia need more people like Peter Andren, not less.

Here is the updated entry in Wikipedia for Peter Andren.

Australians will miss you, Peter.

*****

Peter came into the Parliament in 1996, at the start of the Howard Government. He made this following comment: "Rather than a ringing endorsement of the policies of the new government, the electorate rejected a Labor government and a Prime Minister seen to be out of touch and arrogant."

I wonder if that statement might end up being as true of the Howard Government as Peter Andren believed it was true of the Keating Government. There would be a certain symmetry in Government if that were to be the case.

"plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" — "the more it changes, the more it's the same thing" (Epigram attributed to Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr)

*****

You may read some early responses to the news of Peter Andren's death here, including a link to a comment by Andrew Bartlett, (Democrat Senator) here.

"I Know Nothing". Howard's "Manuel" defence.

It has started. Mad political smearing, lies and innuendo. Cop this lot, from a single article in today's Fairfax Digital news feed, from the Age.

1. A gay sex allegation, initially blamed on the Labor Party, turns out to have come from the Liberals themselves.
2. The Big Business funded "Pro-Work-Choices" Ads used persons with criminal records to play the Union guys. Then Joe Hockey defended it, as "method acting"!!!
   
3. Then the Liberals claim that the Labor Party is being funded by the TWU, and demands "TWU candidates" for the Labor Party be disendorsed. It turns out that one was once a TWU worker more than 10 years ago, and the other candidate left the TWU in 2000 (7 years ago).

Read about it here:

Gay sex smear traced to Liberals

Misha Schubert and Ben Doherty
September 24, 2007

AMID an escalating brawl over political mud-slinging in the countdown to the election, the latest smear on a Liberal figure has been traced to his own party.

Claims that a married federal minister visits gay bathhouses and sexually harasses other men in political circles surfaced yesterday in News Limited papers, which said the Government blamed Labor for smearing the minister, who has children — although the articles made clear Labor was not the source.

Veteran journalist Laurie Oakes, the Nine Network's political editor, said he too was fed the same story by a Liberal as part of an internal power struggle. Prime Minister John Howard refused to comment on the innuendo, which he said he knew nothing about.

*****

The exchange came as big business was reeling from revelations by The Sunday Age that two actors playing "union thugs" in its pro-WorkChoices advertisement were notorious criminals with records for drug offences and violence. One had also faced sex charges. The ads were pulled on Saturday night.

ACTU president Sharan Burrow was incensed by the depiction of the unionists. But Workplace Minister Joe Hockey suggested the men were "method acting" — because "we have a number of union officials out there who have criminal records".

*****

In another controversy, the Transport Workers Union was accused of running a secret multimillion-dollar slush fund. Mr Howard and Mr Hockey demanded Labor leader Kevin Rudd investigate to ensure the union was accountable to its members.

Mr Hockey accused the TWU of funnelling more than $3 million to the Labor Party in recent years, and demanded scalps.

"If Kevin Rudd is fair dinkum about his zero tolerance approach to the unions' dirty tricks, he will return the TWU money and disendorse his TWU candidates — Corio candidate Richard Marles and Victorian Senate candidate David Feeney," he said.

Mr Feeney has not been employed by the TWU for more than a decade, and Mr Marles left the union in 2000.

With AAP

Source: The Age - Fairfax Digital.

Prime Minister Howard is desperate, and is relying on the defence used by "Manuel" from Fawlty Towers all those years ago - "I know nothing".